So I have a fairly similar spec and Ive had no issues. The card idles at under 40 after Witcher 3 for an hour or so it was mid 80's, peaked at 94. No stuttering at all maxed out. Cant remember which exact varient of the card I have, its not the XFX though.

So I've done a fair bit of research on this over the last week or so, and I've pretty much confirmed that the card is overheating and dropping the core's clock rate to cool itself down, and immediately ramping up the fans again. The issue sounds to be a quality control problem with the cooler mounting for the GPU. I've had the card for two years now and it's out of warranty, though I'll try contacting XFX anyway.

I've tried tightening the screws that hold the cooler on and I've changed the layout of my case slightly to ensure better airflow (took out a redundant HDD tray, redistributed some of the cabling so it's out of the way), but neither has made any difference.

I'm not *too* bothered about using framerate limiters on games that support them, or I can underclock the card, but it does effectively mean I don't meet the minimum spec for VR as I should. My only solution to that is either to take the card apart and either fix and reattach the existing cooler or buy a third party replacement, or simply upgrade the card once the new generation models are out.

I've been thinking about it overnight and I can afford an R9 Fury X, and I'm extremely tempted to just order one of those now (it's £70-80 less than the 980Ti which seems to be the competition from the green side). I've always been annoyed at how loud the R9 290 was (though I guess the fans probably don't run quite as much on ones that are actually working properly), and the Fury X has a closed loop liquid cooler as standard. Yes, I could buy a third party liquid cooler for the 290, but it's £70 or £80 that I could be spending on better performance (and indeed I could be throwing that money away if I fuck up the installation).

If XFX just blow you off, my mates vidcard just died on him. I could ask him if he wants to buy yours as a dodgy stopgap till he can get something that..... works If you have a price let me know and I'll ask him.

I think I'm going to keep it as a spare. It still technically works, but I know full well it's defective and I don't feel comfortable selling it.

Got the R9 Fury X installed. Took about an hour as I had to completely change the layout of the airflow in my case. Both my CPU and GPU are now water cooled, but I only had a choice of airflow direction on the CPU cooler; the GPU one is a single unit that I didn't feel comfortable taking apart to reverse the fan.

Ran the Steam VR performance test. The old card would reach 94 degrees and start throttling almost immediately. The new one maxed out at 38 degrees toward the end of the test (at 100% load throughout). Job done.